Saturday 9th April, 2016 : J Shed, Fremantle : Photos by Ryan Ammon [See image gallery at www.spaceshipnews.com.au]
Archive for the ‘Tangled Thoughts of Leaving’ Category
Photos: WAM Song Of The Year Awards at J Shed
Monday, April 18th, 2016Chris Pearson’s Top 10 Albums of 2015
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2015The host of PBS 106.7FM’s Po-Jama People shares his top picks from 2015.
Here are 10 nuggets from a year that brought shite loads of great music from home and overseas. Five Australian albums to start:
Tangled Thoughts of Leaving — Yield to Despair
A band that can only just squeeze five tracks onto a double LP is OK in my book. Tangled Thoughts play some of the most interesting proggie art-rock around. Check out ‘Albanian Sleepover’ parts 1&2
Fourteen Nights at Sea — Minor Light
Following on from their excellent Great North, released last year, Fourteen Nights at Sea carry the bleak and moving nature of their post-rock to infinity and beyond. I look forward to seeing how their sound evolves with a new band member.
Check out ‘Chiltern Justice’.
We Lost the Sea — Departure Songs
Since the death of We Lost the Sea’s vocalist Chris Torpy in 2013, the band’s reinvention as an instrumental behemoth has been achieved with great aplomb. This album as a tribute to Chris, intended or otherwise, has a darkness and a sorrow with a little glimmer of light.
Check out ‘A Galant Gentleman’.
Seedy Jeezus — Seedy Jeezus
Seven tracks of the best 70s-inspired psychedelic rock around with a big twist of stoner. Recorded live at the iconic Tote Hotel. Great songs, huge riffs and more hair than anything this side of ZZ Top.
Check out ‘How Ya Doin’.
My Disco — Severe
Five years since their last album, this latest offering has elements of post-rock and noise, with a little post-punk sprinkled in for good measure. Well and truly worth the wait, in my opinion.
Check out the track ‘Our Decade’.
And five international albums…
Elder — Lore
Their latest album Lore added a big block of prog to the already brimming bowl of psychedelic-stoner-doom-metal. Much cleaner sounding than the epic Dead Roots Stirring, this is an album recorded by a band wise beyond its years.
Check out the title track.
Mogwai — Central Belters
The Glasgow five-piece need no introduction. A band that can do no wrong (in this Scotsman’s eyes). I am usually doubtful about compilation albums entering the arena just before Christmas, but this is an exception to that rule. Central Belters is a three CD (or six LP) monster. It’s a 20-year retrospective, above and beyond the call, 2 CDs of album tracks and one of b-sides and rarities.
Check out the 20-minute long closer ‘My Father My King’ (recorded by Steve Albini).
Papir meets Electric Moon — Papermoon Sessions, Live at Roadburn 2014
Danish trio Papir are joined here by Sula and Lulu from Electric Moon and Mogens from Oresund Space Collective. Three of the best heavy psych jam bands rolled into one, recorded two massive slabs of the best improvised space-rock this side of Uranus.
Check out the track ‘Powdered Stars’.
Sunn O))) — Kannon
A late addition on many of this year’s best of lists I am sure. An album in three tracks, clocking in at just over half an hour. It may be short on time but lacks for nothing else. This trio of tracks manages to be subtly uplifting while conjuring the soundtrack to your worst nightmare. Do not listen to Kannon after midnight.
Check out the middle track ‘Kannon 2’.
Various Artrists — Electric Ladyland (Redux)
The classic Jimi Hendrix double album is reimagined by All Them Witches, Earthless, Wo Fat, Mos Generator, Gozu, Mothership, Elder and many more. This could be the best tribute album ever.
Check out all 15 minutes of All Them Witches’ version of ’Voodoo Chile’.
Chris Pearson presents Po-Jama People on Melbourne’s PBS 106.7FM.
All the psychedelic-stoner-post-space-doom-rock that can be squeezed into the last two hours of Wednesday night.
PREMIERE: Stream Tangled Thoughts of Leaving’s New EP, The Black Captain
Monday, October 12th, 2015
We’re pleased to present the premiere of The Black Captain, the companion EP to Tangled Thoughts of Leaving’s album Yield to Despair.
Initially intended as a bonus for fans who’d pre-ordered Yield to Despair, TTOL opted to name the EP in tribute to the late Pete Dunstan. It’s a heavily textured collection — more jam-oriented and ambient than its companion release — but TTOL have always been masters of balancing their extreme and complex pursuits with experimental noise and slow burn post-metal. The seven minute-centrepiece, “Reprieve”, is one of the best pieces of music they’ve put out in their decade-long career. Vale The Black Captain.
Noiseweek: David Bowie, Failure, Drowning Hose, Iron Maiden, Tortoise & more
Sunday, October 11th, 2015The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.
NEWS
Thank you to everyone who has expressed their condolences and celebrated the life of Pete Dunstan, AKA The Black Captain. Pete’s funeral service will be held at Fremantle Cemetary on Tuesday, with more details available on the Facebook event page. Pete’s co-presenters on Behind the Mirror presented a tribute show on Wednesday night, and Dave Cutbush dedicated his Thursday Out to Lunch show to Pete’s memory. Tangled Thoughts of Leaving have named their forthcoming EP The Black Captain in Pete’s honour, and you can read our archive of Pete’s thoughtful criticism here. Vale The Black Captain.
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Gail Zappa, the widow of Frank Zappa and the executor of the Zappa Family Trust, passed away this week at the age of 70. Rolling Stone have penned a touching obituary on Zappa, including quotes from an interview they conducted with her earlier this year about an Alex Winter-directed documentary about her late husband’s life which is due for 2017.
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The Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame has unveiled its 2016 nominees. Among those included in the list are Cheap Trick, Deep Purple, The Spinners, N.W.A., Yes and The Smiths, as well as more recently-eligible nominees Nine Inch Nails. Artists become eligible for nomination 25 years after the release of their first record. We’re now reaching the point where the acts at the centre of peak grunge and alternative — Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Jane’s Addiction et al. — are eligible for nomination, though they missed out this year. Fan voting is open now at the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame website, with the inductees to be announced in December.
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Continuing on the award beat, the ARIA Award nominees were announced this past week, with usual suspects Courtney Barnett and Tame Impala earning a handful of nods. The Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Album category leaves a lot to be desired — would it hurt to acknowledge something a little more boundary-pushing than In Hearts Wake or Northlane, when we’ve seen new releases from Tangled Thoughts of Leaving, High Tension, Dumbsaint, We Lost the Sea, Hope Drone and a buttload more I’m forgetting? Fuck it, maybe we’ll start our own awards. See the full-list of nominees at the ARIA website.
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Death and the Iron Maiden | NPR
“Whereas their forebears in Black Sabbath engaged the subject of mortality with low and slow misanthropy, Iron Maiden tackled it on frenetically paced, epically rendered cautionary tales, heralded by Dickinson playing the part of a maniacal prophet. The result has been one of metal’s most celebrated legacies, exuding a notion of the very glory and immortality the band’s songs depicted. Yet recently, Maiden’s lyrical themes, and that of many of their influential peers, have manifested as an unavoidable reality. The authors of the mortality narratives that have been heavy metal’s stock in trade for nearly 50 years are confronting their own.”
Why Noise Bands Are Playing at the European Organization for Nuclear Research | Motherboard
“The best parts in [Deerhoof’s] live shows are the points at which they push beyond the melodic and beyond the understandable, into the unknown, into the musical nether regions. But they do it from a basis. That was sort of what I noticed at their show and noticed that I had subconsciously understood the whole time—that a band like Deerhoof, they are doing what they do because they can’t help themselves. They want to start from a basis of well-known musical ideas and then want to push beyond that because they’re curious and they’re just pushing forward.
Which is really what we do here at CERN. The research that we’re doing here at CERN, we’re not doing this for a profit, we’re not doing this to make money. We’re doing this because we really just want to know what happened like a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. We want to know that. And to do that, we have to build a bigger detector to push back farther in time and higher energy to understand this. And that’s really the only reason why we’re doing this, because we’re curious.”
LISTEN
Tortoise — Gesceap
This beautiful synthscape is one of the most vital pieces of music Tortoise have released in their two decade-plus career. “Gesceap” is the first single from The Catastrophist, the follow-up to 2009’s Beacons of Ancestorship, marking the longest time between Tortoise albums. “Gesceap” bears no hallmarks of the jaunty rhythms that marked the previous record’s 11 tracks. This is soothing and uplifting, backed by jazz-inflected drum fills and a rich textural tapestry. The Catastrophist is out on January 22 through Thrill Jockey.
Drowning Horse — Echoes
Nothing comes easy with Drowning Horse. “Echoes” spends half of its length on building up tension, promising a cathartic release from a tension and menace that borders on unbearable. That release does come eventually on “Echoes”, though not in the form of a crushing crescendo as one might expect, but an otherworldly slow bleed of anger, like a resting predator that’s roused from its slumber only to return after a warning growl. The track is taken from Sheltering Sky, out October 22 through FalseXIdol Records and Art As Catharsis.
WATCH
Failure — Counterfeit Sky
Not many bands get a second shot at success — critical, commercial, personal, or however you define it. Even fewer make use of it the way Failure have. “Counterfeit Sky” is the most impressive and ambitious visual effort of Failure’s career. Forgoing Failure’s tradition of borderline cheesy performance-based music videos — the Undone and Stuck on You clips haven’t exactly aged well — this video is (or at least looks) big budget, high concept and timely in its release, given the hype around The Martian and NASA’s Mars announcements. It’s ironic that only now, two decades after the space rock opera that was Fantastic Planet, are Failure capitalising on the imagery of alien worlds. “Counterfeit Sky” is an appropriate choice for a single too; with that earworm of a chorus riff and the shimmering guitars in the bridge, it could fit on Fantastic Planet just as easily as The Heart is a Monster. With Troy Van Leeuwen back in the touring band for the next little while, there is no ceiling for the new Failure.
Tangled Thoughts of Leaving — Reprieve
The chaps from Perth’s most bizarre foursome push vans, flog merch, bang heads and generally faff about in this video for “Reprieve”, a compilation of tour footage from their most European jaunt. The track is taken from the aforementioned EP, The Black Captain, in honour of the late great Pete Dunstan. At the risk of being overly sentimental, I bet Pete would’ve loved this track. It’s a slow-burner in contrast from the majority TTOL’s recent output, but it’s a perfect encapsulating of the band’s ever-shifting dynamics — from tempered build-ups and understated riffage to a rousing but subtle crescendo that burns fast before giving way to a sombre guitar outro. The Black Captain is available now to those who pre-ordered Yield to Despair. Details on a full release are coming soon.
David Bowie — Blackstar
A one minute excerpt of new David Bowie music is still enough to get excited about. “Blackstar” accompanies the opening credit sequence of The Last Panthers, an upcoming British crime drama starring Samantha Morton and John Hurt. The series comes from screenwriter by Jack Thorne, whose credits include Skins, Shameless and This is England ’86. Bowie’s voice is sullen and sultry, like something between the Low, Outside and Hours eras, with more than a hint of menace. The Last Panthers debuts in the UK on Sky Atlantic on November 12.
Noiseweek: Record Store Day, David Bowie, El Ten Eleven, Weedeater and more
Friday, April 17th, 2015The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.
NEWS
Tangled Thoughts of Leaving’s Yield to Despair comes out today. You can stream and buy it on Bandcamp and see them play The Bakery one last time before its closure to launch the record. Expect this album to be rank highly on all of our best-of lists this year, and expect this show to be gargantuan.
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The BBC is reporting that David Bowie is working on new material for a musical stage adaptation of The Man Who Fell To Earth, the 1976 sci-fi film about an alcoholic alien in which Bowie had a starring role. Though Bowie is not slated to appear on stage, he’s said to be closely involved in the production, which is set to debut in New York in December.
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High on Fire have announced the title and release date for their 7th LP: it will be called Luminiferous and it will be released on June 23. The announcement was accompanied by the following mini-treatise from riffer-in-chief Matt Pike:
“We’re doing our part to expose The Elite and the fingers they have in religion, media, governments and financial world downfall and their relationship to all of our extraterrestrial connections in the race to control this world. Wake up, it’s happening. All while we stare at a socially engineered lie we think of as normalcy. Unless we wake from the dream, there will come true doom.”
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A Pressing Business: tQ Goes Inside A Czech Vinyl Plant | The Quietus
“Since much of digital music technology is helmed by a crop of multi-billion dollar companies, with millennial branding and self-styled demi-gods for CEOs, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the marketing strategies and modes of consumption for a medium like vinyl are concerns for a comparatively sluggish underground; a physical product that’s barely changed for generations, yet discussed on panels, in clubs, in record shops, on loop. The companies who supply them, too, must be similarly small-time affairs. But the year-on-year growth of the market recently has been remarkable. The Official Chart Co. noted that 2014 was the first year since 1996 in which sales in the UK reached the one million mark and, according to Nielsen Music, sales in the US alone increased 52% on the year previous to hit an impressive 9.2 million in 2014. And just this past week, the Official Chart Co. also launched the weekly Official Vinyl Albums Chart and Official Vinyl Singles Chart, for the first time in the company’s history.”
Meredith Graves: Pussy Power | Dazed Digital
“That people who have been hurt and people who have been marginalized deserve to be heard. That’s really the first and most striking similarity that comes to mind. In my perfect world, the prevailing ideology would be ‘do what you can to make the world better, to make your life better.’ I have now been in many countries where young kids have come up and said they were inspired by me because I came forward as someone who survived abuse and has suffered from mental illness. You can survive the cultural conditions that have fought to suppress you. I have lived through a horribly abusive relationship. I have struggled my entire life with extreme depression and mood disorders. And now, after a year of traveling the world and talking to people about it, I’m here in a place where I can facilitate the survival of others. Survival is an option, and once you can get to the point where you are above water, if and when you’re feeling up for it, you can reach your hand back and pull someone else up.”
Are You Even Real? Identity and Music in the Digital Age | Pitchfork
“This February, Father John Misty released I Love You, Honeybear, a pretty folk album that doubles as an exposé of our generation’s subconscious. Critics have zoned in on “Bored in the USA”, a mournful white-guy ballad accompanied by laugh track—an apt and self-justifying touch. But the lyrical crux within the album is “Holy Shit”. The song grandly reels off a chain of personal and political ruptures—revolutions, holocausts, incest dreams, original sin—which all emphasize the album’s driving concept: the unbearable heaviness of Josh Tillman’s love for his wife. After he’s tried on many rock-star guises—the chauvinist, the lothario, the “changed man”—it’s in “Holy Shit” that Tillman’s shape-shifting character crystallizes. Honeybear doesn’t just fuck with authenticity; it shows how, when our everyday frames of reference disorient us, our identity fractures, and we grasp for a toehold in the familiar.”
LISTEN
HEADS. — HEADS.
Last week we previewed the second track from Berlin noise rock trio HEADS.’ blistering debut and now Heart of the Rat Records are streaming the EP is streaming in full. It’s a lethal dose of concentrated, unapologetic and frankly ugly pigfuck with hints of Shellac, The Jesus Lizard, Young Widows et al. And it’s bottom-heavy, too; the record hits its stride in the bubbling tension of Black River and Foam before climaxing with the understated and disturbing The Voynich Manuscript. Difficult listening, as it should be.
Weedeater — Claw of the Sloth
North Carolina’s weed metal innovators return with this expectedly filthy cut from their forthcoming, where “Dixie” Dave Collins sounds like he’s singing through a throat tube or gargling cough syrup as he growls over some of the trio’s muddiest riffage to date. The album is called Goliathan and it’s out on May 19 through Seasons of Mist.
WATCH
Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld — The Rest of Us
Director Dan Huiting looms like a voyeur as his camera tilts, tracks and intrudes in this new clip from the forthcoming Stetson/Neufeld collaboration out through Constellation Records at the end of the month. Rarely do music videos match the mood of their companion sounds so well, let alone when the subject matter is so abstract. Repeat viewings recommended.
A Place to Bury Strangers — Now It’s Over (Live on KEXP)
The Loudest Band in New York are also The Most Well-Lit Band on Tour, bringing a collection of strobes and disco-balls to their in-studio appearance for a Seattle radio station. Oliver Ackermann is pretty much a robot when his voice is filtered through that many vocal processors, and the trio chose the most claustrophobic cut from their Transfixiation for a their decidedly claustrophobic performance.
El Ten Eleven — Nova Scotia
The latest video from post-rock’s most pragmatic duo is playful and serene like much of their back catalogue, juxtaposing live footage with sun-washed scene of a pair of kids frolicking and raising hell. The cut comes from the For Emily EP from early last year. Now can someone please bring these guys to Australia?
Noiseweek: Cobain documentary, OK Computer in the Library of Congress, NYT on Liturgy, new music from Death Grips, Godspeed and more
Saturday, March 28th, 2015The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.
NEWS
Radiohead’s OK Computer has been selected for preservation at the US Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in recognition of its “cultural, historical or aesthetic significance.” The organisation selects 25 recordings each year, and Radiohead’s seminal 1997 release joins The Doors’ 1967 self-titled album, Steve Martin’s comedy record A Wild and Crazy Guy and 22 other recordings ranging from the 1890 to 1999 to receive the honour this year.
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The HBO-produced Kurt Cobain documentary Montage of Heck which did the rounds with its debut trailer a couple of weeks back has been confirmed for a theatrical run in our little island nation. US sources point to an April 10 debut in cinemas before the HBO premiere on May 4, but that’s likely a US date; the only solid information on an Australian release points to June 25.
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Earth have struck up a deal with LA-based label / management company Sargent House, joining a stupidly talented roster of the world’s best power trios including Boris, Marriages, Helms Alee, Mutoid Man and Russian Circles. No word yet if this means a severance of Earth’s long-running partnership with Southern Lord.
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British book publisher Strange Attractor are taking pre-orders venerable UK mag The Wire’s latest foray into print publishing with Epiphanies: Life Changing Encounters with Music, a collection of the publication’s Epiphanies column which has been running for over 17 years. Contributors include Michael Gira, Jonny Greenwood, Simon Reynolds and Lydia Lunch.
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The Ark Work is Liturgy’s Third Album | The New York Times
“In his interviews and writings, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix — Liturgy’s singer and songwriter and one of its guitarists — rejected the common black-metal rhetoric of decay, doom and negative certainty in favor of the opposite: building, liberation and positive indecision. He wrote a manifesto about “transcendental black metal,” which he read aloud at an academic symposium and which was excerpted in a journal of poststructural philosophy. (For all of this he was called pretentious, as if black-metal bands of the early-’90s Norwegian period, with corpse-paint and bullet-belts and inverted crosses, hadn’t ever known pretension.) In any case, Liturgy’s music, and the predictable response to it, seemed based on what it was not — how it stood apart from what it sounded like.”
Perennially Contentious: The Return of Faith No More | Pitchfork
“While “alternative rock” was a nebulous descriptor even during the genre’s late-‘80s/early-‘90s heyday, Faith No More were the rare band to truly exemplify both halves of the term. On the surface, the San Francisco quintet resembled the sort of long-haired, ripped-denim hellraisers filling up the dance card on “Headbangers Ball”, but their absurdist take on rock owed as much to Zappa as Zeppelin. And their ubiquitous 1990 breakout hit “Epic” both defined rap-metal and defied it, gilding its atomic funk with progged-out synth fanfares and classical-piano flourishes, like a mosh pit choreographed by Cecil B. DeMille. ”
Why Would A Band of White Dudes Name Themselves Slaves? | The Fader
“From Anal Cunt to Cerebral Ballzy, there have always been bands whose names provoke a reaction, especially in the punk and hardcore scenes. Shock tactics and strong political statements are often at the heart of art—and, more cynically, marketing plans—but lately, several bands have been causing a backlash for the overtones of cultural and political appropriation evoked by their names. Prostitutes, Girl Band, and Viet Cong—who played at FADER FORT last week—all make very different music (techno, noise, and rock respectively) but the one thing they have in common is that they’re all made up of white men. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they’ve been at the centre of the discussion, with Viet Cong even having a recent university show cancelled by a promoter who deemed their name “offensive.” (The Calgary band have since issued a statement claiming they were “naive” in choosing their name and “never meant to trivialize the atrocities or violence that occurred on both sides of the Vietnam war.”)”
LISTEN
Godspeed You! Black Emperor — Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress
That happened quick. Godspeed only announced their fifth LP in late February; Asunder… is out on March 31 and was made available for streaming earlier this week. Some of the cuts might sound familiar — I’m almost certain the opening of “Peasantry or ‘Light! Inside of Light!” was a live staple on their first Australian tour in early 2013. It’s a track mired in dirge and drudgery, anchored by a beastly symphonic below. In fact, dirge and drudgery abound on this record: after a few listens, it feels like the most apocalyptic record yet, as if the collective have traded in their hope for nihilism.
Tangled Thoughts of Leaving — The Albanian Sleepover
Speaking of dirge, Perth quartet and LIN favourite Tangled Thoughts of Leaving have debuted the first track from their forthcoming sophomore LP. At a second under 10 minutes it’s probably the album’s shortest tracks, but it showcases the band’s darkly melodic tendencies as fields of static rise and fall under a ten-ton-heavy riffage before a brooding interlude, a crashing crescendo and a “to be continued…” until we get to hear part 2. I’ve little doubt this will be one of the best records of the year.
Drowning Horse — Drowning Horse
The most punishing band in Perth are in the midst of work on a new record that, fingers crossed, will be out before the end of the year, and before they play their first show of 2015 at our five year anniversary show at The Bakery on April 2 (tickets here!), they’ve made their debut record for free, or whatever price you may feel like paying.
WATCH
Inventions — Peregrine
The first video from Inventions’ Maze of Woods is an eerie, home video-style piece of cinema that recalls cultist found footage, Jason Voorhees and Chuckie — an odd mix of aesthetics given the track’s relaxed tone, but it’s a fitting juxtaposition. You can stream more from that album at Inventions’ Bandcamp.
Joy Division + Teletubbies
It’s the film-noir fever dream you’ve always wanted.
Noiseweek: Rollins on tape trading, TTOL crowdfunding, NYC hardcore and more
Friday, March 6th, 2015The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.
NEWS
After the overwhelming response to the Perth Needs More Music and Arts Venues Facebook group and the subsequent meeting in light of the impending closure of The Bakery, The West Australian is reporting that Culture and Arts Minister John Day has expressed his support for a new government-backed venue. The tentative frontrunner is Rechabites Hall, a former theatre on Williams Street. People power!
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LIN favourites Tangled Thoughts of Leaving are edging closer to their Pozible goal of raising $5,000 to fund the pressing of their forthcoming second album, Yield to Despair. They’re over 80% of the way there with 10 days to go, so if you’ve got a few dollars to spare and you like vinyl copies of post-psychosis-prog-jazz-beardcore, help them out. They’ve also just announced a European tour — including an appearance at the jealousy-inducing dunk! festival in Belgium — alongside Bird’s Robe labelmates Solkyri in May. They’re also touring the country with 65daysofstatic starting Saturday at Adelaide Festival.
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Speaking of jealousy-inducing festival lineups, All Tomorrow’s Parties have announced the next wave of acts for their Iceland festival this July, adding Public Enemy, Swans, Lightning Bolt, Bardo Pond and more to a bill that already includes Iggy Pop, Drive Like Jehu, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Froth.
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Henry Rollins: Confessions of a Tape Trader | LA Weekly
“Almost as soon as I began gathering paper evidence of this emerging scene, I became aware of cassette recordings that bands and fans were making. The mere existence of these tapes — music you could play over and over again, which could not be found in a record store — was in itself a small miracle. That someone had the wherewithal to wrench these moments from the ether was like beating the odds and defying the bastards who would have been happy for us to go the way of the proverbial tree that falls in the forest, unheard and unwitnessed.“
Kid Millions Talks The Importance of Mentors | The Talkhouse
“A mentor is your trusted guide and companion. Some mentors have no idea they are providing this kind of service. Maybe they show you how not to represent yourself. Maybe they show up to a gig completely drunk and cancel the gig. Perhaps they are assholes to everyone they deem unworthy of their attention. But in the best scenario the mentor sees your truth before you can grasp it yourself. She holds up a mirror that reveals your pure, undistorted truth.“
United Blood: How Hardcore Conquered New York | The New Yorker
“The New York scene was never monolithic. Shows drew skinheads, punks, and plenty of average-looking young people in T-shirts; many of the fans who followed Agnostic Front also turned out for False Prophets, a sarcastic and theatrical punk-inspired band. Even so, many scene participants nursed an inferiority complex. The Manhattanites disdained the guys from Queens; the Long Islanders hated being thought of as “interlopers”; virtually everyone resented the scenes in other cities, where the band members seemed to have enough spare time and cash to tour and promote themselves. “The kids from New York, we were like these crazy fucking street rats,” Todd Youth, who played guitar for a band called Murphy’s Law, says. “The kids from Boston and D.C. were really well off.” While most other early-eighties scenes gave rise to influential independent record labels, New York’s generated war stories. “You were getting chased down the street by gangs of Puerto Ricans that wanted to fucking kill you,” Youth remembers; Avenue A was contested turf. Alex Kinon, who played with Agnostic Front, says that he was once shot at in Tompkins Square Park, and that Vinnie Stigma responded by rushing toward the gunfire, armed with only an improvised shield in the form of a garbage-can lid.“
LISTEN
Sannhet — The Revisionist
Boutique San Fran label The Frenser are off to an excellent start to 2015, first with the earthshaking King Woman EP and now The Revisionist, the pummeling sophomore album from the similarly quake-inducing trio Sannhet. Better watch that faultline.
And So I Watch You From Afar — Wasps
Is there a modern heavy label as forward-thinking as Sargent House? From post-rock to doom to shoegaze to noise, the LA-based management outfit covers every base of exciting guitar music. Belfast quartet ASIWYFA settle into a groove on this preview of their fourth LP Heirs, balancing the frenetic guitar work with some rare vocal harmonization before the absurd double bass drumming kicks in. And for once they finish a song under the five-minute mark. Set guitars to kill.
Elder — Lore
Not to be mistaken with Jimmy McGill’s latest attempt at legal specialisation, Lore is a ball-tearingly heavy offering from a Rhode Island power trio with just the right amount of moxie mixed with the obligatory Kyuss/Sabbath worship to satisfy all your stoner/desert/metal/psych cravings. Is it insecurity that drives all these power trios to write songs that sound fucking gargantuan? Whatever it is, don’t stop.
Flowers & Fire — Demo
Raw riffage energetic melancholy abound in this first offering from a Vancouver post-punk outfit with virtually zero web presence. There’s a distinct Siouxsie/Banshee vibe throughout but the notes ring with a panic immediacy. Uneasy listening, but it’s not supposed to be easy.
The nice folks at National Public Radio have gone to the trouble of rounding up 100 tracks from 100 artists appearing at this month’s SXSW so you can better navigate the veritable shit-show that is trying to decipher if a band name is real or made-up for a hipster-baiting Jimmy Kimmel bit. There are a few familiar names, though — including Slanted & Enchanted guests METZ and Melbourne weirdos Twerps.
WATCH
THAW — Last Day
The Black Captain has written extensively about THAW, the Instant Classic label and the doom/black developments in Poland, but it’s a scene so far away, us Southern hemisphere residents are unlikely to ever witness it in the flesh lest you make the costly journey to the old world yourself. In lieu of such a pilgramage, here’s some HD footage of the sonic tyranny in action.
The Last Song Before The War
Tinariwen’s origin story might be the most rock ‘n’ roll in music history, but its members are merely one part of the Tuareg music tradition of Mali. In this hour-long documentary, director Kiley Kraskouskas documents the 2011 iteration of the three-day Festival in the Desert amongst political turmoil and sectarian conflict.
Live Review: Tangled Thoughts of Leaving at The Bakery
Thursday, August 28th, 2014
The Bakery, Saturday August 23, 2014 Review by Matthew Tomich Photos by Hana Lee-Smith Tangled Thoughts of Leaving returned to the stage last Saturday for only the third time this year, stealing away from the studio to preview a couple […]
Live Review: RTRFM Radioathon at The Bakery
Monday, August 19th, 2013
Saturday 17th August, 2013. Review by Brady Clements. On Saturday night RTRFM put on yet another incredible show spread out over five venues, each with their own core style with the main venue (The Bakery) showcasing some of Perth’s newest […]
Photos: RTRFM Radiothon – Main Stage at the Bakery
Monday, August 19th, 2013
RTRFM Radiothon – Main Stage at the Bakery, Northbridge on Saturday August 17, 2013. Photos by Karen Lowe.
